Harry Potter, Race, and British Multiculturalism

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Hagrid’s half-Giant identity is a plot arc in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so too are the House Elves and Hermione’s crusading, if not paternalistic, attempts to free them from oppression. In the Deathly Hallows the penultimate “other” becomes the mudblood, a term we first hear in Chamber of Secrets. The final book, too, revolves around non-wizarding creatures of, as the Ministry of Magic and Dolores Umbridge put it, “near human intelligence,” and Harry is labelled as a very odd, special, and different wizard by Griphook the Goblin because he treats non-humans with courtesy and respect. The books are dedicated to highlighting the fallacy of “the other” but, and file this under uncomfortable truths, all the human characters of colour are relegated to the sidelines.

JK Rowling has called her books “very British” in a number of interviews, and has even stated that they are a “prolonged argument for tolerance.” However, I can’t help but draw parallels (note: I’m drawing parallels, not determining causality) from her treatment of race and “otherness” in the books to the conversations about multiculturalism and race theory that have occurred throughout British history and continue today.

Rowling has been very explicit about the connection between Pure Blood Wizarding ideology and the Nazism that led to the holocaust. But race theory, the belief that attributes and abilities could be determined by the socially constructed notion of race, was equally dominant in the United Kingdom. Weeding out “undesirables” wasn’t particular to Nazi ideology and was common across Europe.

British identity was partially constructed using internal colonization, where Welsh, Scottish and Irish minorities were subsumed into Britishness, an identity which still remains ambivalent and dynamic. Britishness was also constructed in opposition to a number of external European threats and was only reinforced through colonialism, which was justified by applying race theory.

Even after the Second World War, Great Britain restricted entry to Jewish refugees while simultaneously citing its own tolerance. Jewish bodies were and continue to be racialized, but even though Rowling has been explicit with her works’ connection to the Holocaust, racism is constructed as pureblood witches and wizards versus muggles, mudbloods, and magical creatures.

I’m not the first person to note that the fantasy genre has a history of replacing PoCs with monsters and magical creatures. Writing for Fantasy Book Review, author Lane Heymont states:

…[I]t feels like white authors have an easier time, or are more comfortable, writing from the perspective of  dragons, ghosts, elves, Minotaurs, and other non-humans than another human being. Seems ironically odd, don’t you think? And the writing suffers for it, as does the cause.

I target fantasy specifically because I know that Rowling has the ability to write from a PoC’s perspective as evidenced in The Casual Vacancy, but her fantasy works imitate most of the genre: There’s a brilliant ability to create non-human cultures and magic systems, but fantasy novels with people of colour as main characters are sadly rare.

If these books are “very British” and the quintessential “others” in British society are racialized minorities, than why has race been rendered invisible? Whether intentionally or not, side-lining characters of colour matches the British multicultural model that defines racial integration as near invisibility.

Racialiazing “otherness” has been part of the British experience, and Rowling, with her progressive roots, seems to be reacting towards this kind of cruelty by dedicating seven books and several years of her life to combatting it, only to create works that replicate the systemic exclusion of minorities. To clear up any confusion, I’m not saying that Rowling had to talk about how it feels like to be black at Hogwarts, but what it feels like to be Dean Thomas at Hogwarts. (Incidentally, I was disappointed that while Thomas’ backstory was potentially up for inclusion in the official cannon, it eventually had to be axed due to editorial limitations. I look forward to reading more about him in Pottermore.)

As a series that practically begs the reader to take it personally and that has birthed devoted communities and fan conventions, issues of representation and inclusion become incredibly important: fans want to know that they’re allowed in, and if you’re aiming for an emotional reader response, then this is a reaction that should be taken seriously. Further, the exclusion of active people of colour in fiction constitutes a form of erasure that undervalues their construction of and contributions to both fictional and real societies.

As it stands, we know that Hogwarts plays host to a variety of people of colour (Cho Chang, the Patel sisters, Dean Thomas, Blaise Zabini, Kinglsey Shacklebolt etc.) but they are, in a sense, rendered invisible. Their races are so invisible, in fact, that they’ve become model minorities; their races do not detract from their Britishness.

The idea of integration as a key to a successful multicultural policy stems back to the Second World War. British politicians knew, especially after Kristallnacht, what Germany’s Jews were facing, but still worked actively to limit the number of entries into the country. In 1965, Roy Hattersley, a Labour politician argued that “without integration, limitation is inexcusable, without limitation, integration is impossible,” the idea being that immigration should be restricted because it might rile the emotions of British citizens, the same rational for restricting entry to Jewish refugees. Minorities became responsible for the resentment directed towards them.

The subtle casuistry of this linkage of a commitment to “harmonious community relations” to necessary restriction on immigration and immigrants has continued to be employed by successive British governments. It has a wonderfully corrupt, but popularly acceptable rhetorical formula which argues that:

  • as decent and tolerant people we are naturally opposed to any form of racism or discrimination.
  • simultaneously, we are committed to a harmonious society.
  • however; immigrants and ethnic minorities have a capacity to generate racial hostility and discrimination from the majority population.
  • consequently: in order to guarantee harmonious community relations we must rigorously control immigration.
    –Charles Husband, Doing Good by Stealth, Whilst Flirting with Racism: Some Contradictory   Dynamics of British Multiculturalism

More recently, government officials stated that the reason the London Bombers carried out the 2005 train attacks was because they were insufficiently integrated into British culture, even though the evidence pointed otherwise, thus starting a firm government push to ensure that Britain’s Muslims were also “well-integrated.”

In 2003, in response to the Labour government’s proposed legislation on asylum seekers, British tabloids exploded with accusations that immigrants were abusing the system and dirtying the country with AIDS, Hepatitis B, and TB. These accusations don’t seem so far off from the hearings held in the Ministry of Magic, where we saw a witch being accused of stealing a wand (stealing from the system) and not being sufficiently magical (British.) While Rowling’s stories may have been inspired by the holocaust, they still play out in Great Britain today. They are indeed “very British” books; Rowling is both prescient and astute when she highlights government and media sanctioned oppression and she’s at her strongest when she writes these scenes.

Only last week The Guardian published a piece by David Goodhart, who accused liberals of favouring a highly-individualistic identity that transcended the boundaries created by the nation state, roughly defining certain liberals as being pro-immigration and therefore anti-community.

This individualistic view of society makes it hard for modern liberals to understand why people object to their communities being changed too rapidly by mass immigration – and what is not understood is easily painted as irrational or racist…If society is just a random collection of individuals, what is there to integrate into? In liberal societies, of course, immigrants do not have to completely abandon their own traditions, but there is such a thing as society, and if newcomers do not make some effort to join in it is harder for existing citizens to see them as part of the “imagined community”. When that happens it weakens the bonds of solidarity and in the long run erodes the “emotional citizenship” required to sustain welfare states.

According to Goodhart, the very presence of immigrants destabilizes allegedly harmonious British communities with resentment (a romanticized fallacy, especially when looking at Britain’s long history of class warfare), their bodies becoming symbols of chaos that disrupt a cohesive national identity. To be a racialized minority is to have people assume that you are unwilling to emotionally integrate into British identity and society. Some conservatives argue that under multiculturalism people will abdicate working together towards a common collective goal known as nation-building; however, the examples above show that Britain’s ideal form of multiculturalism has always been assimilationist.

Rowling is progressive, clearly pro-immigration, and the Harry Potter series illustrate a typical liberal approach to race blindness. Her works still presuppose that integration is synonymous with invisibility, but she also argues for the potential success of Britain’s multicultural model.  Their well-integrated and invisible races ensure that Cho Chang, Dean Thomas, and the Patel sisters can be British without disrupting British identity with their racialized bodies. While I appreciated that Cho Chang became a sobbing mess in Order of the Phoenix without her emotional deterioration being tied to her ethnicity, I can’t separate issues of representation from the larger systemic trend found within the fantasy genre. (Cho is the character of colour with the most screen time. One chapter is dedicated to her character in Order of the Phoenix, where she spends most of the time crying, and she receives a few sentences here and there from books 4 to 7. When we meet her, in book 3, she doesn’t say much of anything.)  That characters of colour are in the background allow the reader to know that Hogwarts is Very Diverse, but their importance to the plot is minimal. As the very worst possibility, they act as ornaments to Hogwarts’ status as a Very Progressive School.

This integration-as-invisibility approach is distinctly different from the movie adaptations, where the characters of colour wore clothing representative of their ethnic backgrounds to the Yule Ball, whereas the same characters in the books wore dress robes like everyone else. Except…children of immigrants don’t uniformly wear clothing from their parents’ home country. While the Potter books erase ethnic difference, the movies champion essentialism which, to her credit, Rowling can’t be accused of doing.

Rowling spends seven books opining about the importance of diversity, while replicating the systemic sidelining of characters of colour. The characters in the Harry Potters books are proof of multiculturalism’s success, but the structure of the books imitate systematic issues concerning racial representation. There’s tension in this approach: on one hand, it becomes exhausting to have one’s entire identity defined by ethnic background (something we can’t choose) and being able to choose one’s identity through acquired membership (identity markers we can choose, eg. being part of an SF/F fandom) can be a highly liberating experience. On the other hand, if Rowling believes in anti-otherizing, then why isn’t the quintessential British “other” given more screen time, not to discuss race, but to simply be? While a British progressive may envision a rainbow utopia of immigrants and new citizens, we know that their invisibility exists to comfort us while we pat ourselves on the back for being progressive. When it comes to screen time for characters of colour, their stories are still marginalized. The Harry Potter books are in no way the worst offenders in the genre—and I still remain a loyal fan—but there’s a serious cognitive dissonance that needs to be analyzed when a book series extolling the virtues of diversity are not particularly diverse themselves.

Autopsy and Jesus

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This first appeared on Splice Today. It seemed like an appropriate post for Easter.
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Everybody loves pop music that sticks it to the man. Whether it’s Dylan nasaling about how the times they are a’changing, Johnny Rotten extolling anarchy, or PE fighting the power, somebody (usually Greil Marcus) can be counted on to gush about the apocalyptic awesomeness of shaking your butt on behalf of the downtrodden and dispossesed.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Dylan and Rotten and PE too, and I don’t wish Greil Marcus on any of them. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that, despite all their enthusiastic anarchy and change and power-fighting — or, more likely, because of it — they’re all extremely popular and critically validated. They’re charismatic rock stars swaggering for freedom and equality…which makes them icons of liberal capitalism, not opponents of it. If you want something that actually questions the values we hold dear, it seems like you need something a little less individual, a little less mediagenic, a little less virile — and maybe, possibly, a little more dead.

If you’re looking for death in popular music, the go-to genres are (obviously) death metal and (perhaps less obviously) bluegrass gospel. Two recent releases one from each genre, make the point quite clearly. Autopsy’s massive retrospective All Tomorrow’s Funerals, collecting all their EPs, starts with the new title track “All Tomorrow’s Funerals,” five minutes of zombie-demon vocals and dry-heaving spasms of drums and classic rock riffs, closing out with a doomed trudge to the grave. Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s Sing Me a Song About Jesus gets to the afterlife almost as quickly; the second song, “The Rich Man,” is a quick, cheerful bluegrass rave-up with patented fleet-fingered solos about how the rich on earth better do some serious thinking before they face the judgment.

It’s not just their mouldering fascinations which link death metal and bluegrass gospel, though. It’s their resolute unhipness. It’s one thing to be ready to die for love or to burn out rather than fade away — it’s another to just be really excited at the idea of corpses. It’s hard to read through Autopsy’s track list without giggling: “Mauled to Death,” “Feast of the Graveworm,” “Squeal Like a Pig,” “Dead Hole.” On the one hand, Autopsy is certainly in on the joke — but that doesn’t exactly mean they don’t take it seriously. “Destined to Fester” from the classic 1991 EP Retribution for the Dead is like Rush hit in the head with a brontosaurus, the prog outlines slowed down into giant dragging Sabbath-slabs, Getty Lee’s high-pitched wails turned into garbled grunts, the flashing guitars thumped into detuned monstrosities — misshapen, but still too geekily awesome for cool.

Similarly, the Lawson track “Little Star,” narrated by one of the wise men, is every bit as clunky as that conceit suggests. “Twinkle, twinkle little star/how we wonder what we are/they say beneath your diamond glow/there’s someone we should get to know.” The music shuffles along in the folksy, polished, Prairie-Home-Companion vein that Alison Krauss has made the sound of contemporary bluegrass. Between those earnest lyrics and the we-wish-we-were-AOR-but-we’re-not-sure-how-to-get-there backing, it’s a fairly embarrassing package; one of those things that you want to listen to, if at all, with the car windows rolled up.

Both Autopsy and Lawson are, in other words, and in their own way, morbidly corny, like plaid body bags. The technical virtuosity at the heart of both genres is the nail in the coffin, whether it’s the perfect surging acapella harmonies on Lawson’s “Going on Home” or the tight quick-march tempo changes on Autopsy’s “Keeper of Decay.” In either case, there’s a deliberate deindividuation, a determination to disappear into the demands of their respective idioms. “No, I won’t sell out for money/fancy home or big fine car,” Lawson sings. Or, as Autopsy puts it, “Face chewed to bits/On my body they feast/Swimming in the rancid sewage/Spreading their disease.” For both death and bluegrass, the faith uses and consumes you, not the other way around.

For death metal, Autopsy is surprisingly, gloriously eclectic — from the mauled classic rock of “Broken People” to the punky hardcore of “Fiend for Blood” to the doom of “Retribution for the Dead,” to weird masterpieces like “In the Grip of Winter,” which stagger about the metal landscape with a lurching so intense it almost qualifies as zombie funk. Doyle Lawson, too has been an innovator, reaching out to other gospel traditions, most notably during his time with the Country Gentlemen on the great 1978 album Calling My Children Home. But while both certainly have star power and genius, they’ve also both turned that genius in many ways towards erasing themselves in the name of their particular faith and/or community and/or morbid obsession. Musicians aren’t meritocratic heroes whose rebel yawp frees us from regimental squareness. They’re just indifferently-dressed corpses marching into the pit like the rest of us, listening to those demon grunts and high-lonesome hallelujahs which someone else will be singing when we’re gone.
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Comics Turning Into Art…Or Not

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This appeared a while back at the Chicago Reader
 
Comics are part of visual art — sort of. There aren’t too many comics pages in permanent museum collections…but on the other hand gallery shows featuring comics artists are more and more common. The MCA’s “New Chicago Comics” helps to explain why comics don’t and do fit on museum walls. On the “don’t” side is the work of Jeff Brown and Paul Hornschemeirer, both artists whose focus is insistently narrative. Brown especially, with his crude drawings and layouts and cutesy punch lines, doesn’t benefit from the venue’s close focus. Works by Anders Nilsen and Lilli Carré, on the other hand, seem liberated by being lifted out of their original context. A Nilsen page showing six panels of a small pigeon cursing in darkness before it suddenly sees a cave full of blind birds is not diminished by the fact that you don’t know where the story goes. On the contrary, it leaves you, like the pigeon, trapped in a mysterious subterranean landscape, where there is wonder and life but no escape. Similarly, Lille Carré’s stencil-like drawing Splits, showing a stylized woman in a teapot almost touching her own duplicate, folds comics’ panel-to-panel repetition back on itself. It’s as if a character turned around, saw herself across the gutter, and was instantly transmuted into art. The MCA show provides an interesting contrast between some comics which can’t, and are perhaps not even interested in, making that turn, and some which can and do.
 

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Utilitarian Review 3/30/13

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News

Chris Gavaler is joining us as a regular blogger. Welcome aboard Chris!

It’s about two years since our Victorian Wire post took over the internets.

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Alec Stevens on Christian Comics.

The 1993 Rolling Stone Record Guide. 2 Stars for Reign in Blood?

Saying the same thing over and over about gun violence.

Aishwarya Subramanian on Timpa, an Indian comic inspired by Tintin.

Alex Buchet on the strange collaboration between Steve Ditko and Eric Stanton.

Mahendra Singh on how Tintin is the perfect hero for Indian children.

Thomas Hardy vs. Charles Schulz. Bonk.

Chris Gavaler on Jack Kirby’s metafiction.

Erin Polgreen asks whether comics journalism can be funny.

Gary Groth appeared in comments to talk about Al Plastino’s Peanuts.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Atlantic, I talk about:

—why women’s magazines treat women much like men’s magazines do. Sharon Marcus knows all.

—why there should be less handwringing about expensive weddings. Bonus anecdote about how my wife proposed to me!

—Megan McArdle’s silly argument that gay marriage will end the sexual revolution.

—the uncanny valley awfulness of The Host.

On Splice Today, I talk about:

—Child Ballads, and good and bad versions of ancient songs about murder and death.

—A Civil Remedy, a documentary about trafficking, and different experiences of prostitution.
 
Other Links

Stop fat shaming Kim Kardashian. She’s fucking pregnant.

Nanette Fondas on myths about mothers who opt out.

Kate Losse on the downsides of leaning in.

Amanda Marcotte argues that Victoria’s secret sexy underwear for teens is fine.
 
This Week’s Reading

Finished David Graeber’s Debt. Read for review a preview of Jal Mehta’s excellent book about school reform, The Allure of Order. Started Octavia Butler’s Kindred.Also still reading The Two Towers to my son…got to the trek through Mordor, which I think is the best part so far….
 

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Funny vs. Facts: How can you make a joke in comics journalism?

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What’s the funniest comic you’ve ever read? Was it true?

Editing a magazine of comics journalism presents some interesting challenges. Symbolia merges non-fiction reporting, illustration, and interactive elements. We’re trying a new kind of news, and it seems to be working. We’ve built a truly global audience for our work (only 55% of our subscribers are in the US), which is amazing.

But there’s still something that I’m struggling to do: break through the somber tones affecting most comics journalism today and publish something that is deeply, truly, gut-bustingly hilarious. Editorial cartoons don’t count. While they rely on fact, the use of caricature and, y’know, opinion, can obscure the integrity of the reportage.

Seriousness is something that plagues non-fiction comics in general. From Fun Home to Stitches to Palestine, things can get pretty grim. It could be because comics are still trying to “prove themselves” as a medium—but I sure hope not. We’re all over the “but comics aren’t for kids anymore” thing….right?

When I was developing Symbolia, when it was just a twinkle in my eye, I was continually asked two questions:

  1. But how will you make it funny?
  2. Well, is it true?

I’d like to think there’s room in the world for both. Give me the John Jeremiah Sullivan of comics journalism. Please. The funniest non-fiction comics work I’ve read in the past few years has been autobiographical, not reportage: Vanessa Davis’ Make Me a Woman and Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz. More David Sedaris than David Remnick.

Matt Diffee’s reportage on snake handlers in the Cartoon Picayune is a refreshing break from the oh-so-serious comics journalism trope, but his breed of work is pretty rare. Andy Warner has also done some amazing work for us and we love the little easter eggs he peppers throughout each project.

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Matt Diffee for the Cartoon Picayune

What to do about it?

We’re closing production on Symbolia’s third issue now and one thing is painfully obvious: Comics journalism can be whimsical. It can be gut-wrenchingly honest. It can be evocative and convey real emotions. Comics can convey humor. Comics can convey truth. But can they do both?

I often feel, as an editor of a news product, that we have to prove the veracity of our work since it’s not “typical news.” That often means we fact-check the funny out.

That doesn’t mean that Symbolia is dry and dull and depressing. Joyce Rice, Symbolia’s cofounder, and I do all sorts of things to adapt: We have a really whimsical sense of design, we pair cultural reporting with stuff that goes a little deeper, investigation-wise, we add interactive treats to cultivate delight…but straight up humor is really, really hard.

Audrey Quinn and Kat Fajardo for Symbolia

Audrey Quinn and Kat Fajardo for Symbolia

So, we’ve developed all of these coping mechanisms to add delight–but our jokes are few and far between. We’re publishing a story on sexbot AI in the next issue and I finally feel like we have something that is deeply humorous, though it pushes a few journalistic boundaries.

I figured I’d take this conundrum to the HU community and ask you to prove me wrong. I’m looking for deeply funny, deeply true examples of comics journalism. SO: Let’s take this to the comments. I want you to tell me I’m wrong. What’s out there? Is what I’m looking for even possible?  I’ll be diving in and out of the ensuring thread over the weekend and will pull the most interesting, most insightful comments up into this post.

Starter question: What is the single most hilarious work of non-fiction comics you’ve ever read? Why? GO!

All right, we got some great ideas–R. Crumb, Jessica Abel, Harvey Kurtzman, and more.

Time for my next question: When the cartooning is REALLY cartoony, can a comic still convey truth?

Marvels of Metafiction

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Google “jennifer egan” and seconds later the term “metafiction” will attach itself leech-like to the side of her postmodern head.

I know this because members of my university have made the possibly foolhardy decision to ask me to give a talk on the Pulitzer winning author for our 2013 Tom Wolfe Weekend Seminar. I’m to place A Visit from the Goon Squad into “the context of contemporary American culture” with “a discussion of Egan’s special skills as a writer,” keeping in mind she will be “sitting right there in front of you.”

I regularly tell my first year comp students that even if we could materialize authors in our classroom (usually during a discussion of Henry James’ mind-blowingly ambiguous The Turn of the Screw), their opinions would be completely irrelevant. Readers and only readers determine the meaning of a text. Except of course in this case. Because that will be the actual Jennifer Egan. In the front row. Listening. To me. Blathering. About her book.
 

Jennifer Egan

 
Poetic comeuppance aside, the author’s physical presence will be especially apt for a discussion of Goon Squad. Chapter one opens: “It began the usual way . . .” and before you’ve waded in a dozen pages you’re knee deep in self-referential story-telling, overt comments about symbols and plot arcs and collaborative writing. Ms. Egan is pulling off her metaphorical mask and yelling: Look at me!

So now, after stretching to pluck David Lodge’s The Art of Fiction from my office book shelf, let me flip to Chapter 46: “Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novel and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own compositional procedures.”

Apart from a requisite nod to the 18th century’s Tristram Shandy, Lodge spends most of his time chatting with John Barth and Kurt Vonnegut. William Gass coined the term in 1970, after Barth demonstrated the style in his 1968 novel Lost in the Funhouse. Slaughterhouse Five was published a year later. Add Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and a couple of short stories by Robert Cover, and there’s your course syllabus for “Goon Squad: Founding Fathers of American Metafiction.”

Except, wait, here’s that inevitable moment, my weekly plot twist, where I veer to where I must always veer:

Superheroes!

No, no, no, NO. American metafiction did NOT begin in the late 60s. It was not a highbrow literary phenomenon. It was the lowest of the lowbrows, the pulpiest of the pulps, that ultimate literary stepchild, the comic book.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby beat Pynchon by a half-decade. In Fantastic Four #2, on newsstands in 1961, Reed Richards convinces an alien race not to invade Earth by showing them drawing of monsters. “Those are some of Earth’s most powerful warriors!” he tells them, while thinking, “I pray he doesn’t suspect that they’re actually clipped from ‘Strange Tales’ and ‘Journey into Mystery!’” Two other Marvel titles sharing newsstand space with Fantastic Four.

Two issues later, the Human Torch chances onto a stash of old comics. “Say! Look at this old, beat-up comic mag! It’s from the 1940’s!!” It features the Golden Age Namor on the cover. “The Sub-Mariner! . . . He used to be the world’s most unusual character!” And guess who shows up two panels later?

In issue five, Johnny’s reading habits have expanded. Reed asks, “What are you reading, Johnny?”It’s The Incredible Hulk #1, out the same month. “A great new comic mag, Reed. Say! You know something—! I’ll be doggoned if this monster doesn’t remind me of The Thing!” Because he’s supposed to. Marvel created Hulk because of the Thing’s popularity.

The cover of FF #9 asks: “What happens to comic magazine heroes when they can’t pay their bills and have no place to turn?” But #10 is even bolder: “In this epic issue surprise follows surprise as you actually meet Lee and Kirby in the story!!” The authors stare up at the action from the front row.

Stan: “How’s this for a twist, Jack? We’ve got Doctor Doom as one of the Fantastic Four!!”

Jack:  “And Mister Fantastic himself is the villain!! Our fans oughtta flip over this yarn!!”

 

Fantastic-Four-10

 
As promised, Dr. Doom uses the Marvel duo to lure Reed into a trap.

Johnny: “Phone call for you, Reed! It’s Lee and Kirby! They’d like you to go to their studio to work out a plot with ‘em!”

Reed: “Strange…we just finished discussing a new plot yesterday!”

Thing: “Tell ‘em if they don’t stop makin’ me even uglier than I am, I’m liable to go up there and wrap this two-ton weight around their skinny necks!”

Issue 11 goes further still. The team has to stand in line to get a copy of their own comic book, and then they go home to answer fan letters, shattering the last remains of the fourth wall. Mr. Lumpkin, their mailman, laments in the final panel: “Blankety blank fans and comic magazine heroes, and letters to the editor pages! Ohhh my achin’ back!”
 

Stan Lee

 
The trend dies a quiet death in the next issue when the Hulk shows up with no mention of that comic mag John had been reading. Marvel traded in metafiction for multi-title continuity. That brings us into 1962, still eight years before Barth coins the term.

And does all of this put Jennifer Egan into “the context of contemporary American culture”?

Um, no, not really.

So you’ll forgive me if I sign off now and finish reading Goon Squad.

‘Nuff said.
 

Jack Kirby